OTTAWA – More than two dozen senior officials and diplomats in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government monitored information about a Toronto artist over her criticism of the oil and gas industry’s environmental performance.

This behind the scenes reaction was described in passages from more than 2,000 internal federal emails and other records, featured in a new book – Banned on the Hill – released this month by the artist and environmental activist, Franke James.

“This is a small fraction of all the people who’ve been monitoring my file and this is ridiculous,” said James in an interview.

“It’s simply by disagreeing with them that I made it on to their list.”

James has gained a strong Internet fan base through her work, producing animated visual essays and illustrated books that promote sustainable development.

Her first book from 2009 – Bothered by my Green Conscience – described her efforts to reduce her environmental footprint by selling her SUV and a battle with municipal bureaucrats for the right to replace her interlocking brick driveway with a permeable green driveway.

But she found herself on the federal government’s radar in the spring of 2011 after some diplomats agreed to offer a $5,000 grant in support of a European art tour featuring James’s artwork, only to see it revoked a few days later by a senior director of the Foreign Affairs Department’s climate change division who felt the funding would “run counter to Canada’s interests.”

James’ new book released emails showing that government officials were troubled by her “green conscience” and opposed her proposed tour in partnership with a non-government environmental organization in Croatia called Nektarina. One background document from the department said her artwork was not funded because it dealt “mostly with climate change” and was “advocating a message that was contrary to the government’s policies on the subject.”

In one email, a trade commissioner at the Canadian embassy in Berlin, Thomas Marr, asked who was to blame for encouraging James’ proposed art show.

“The Nektarina Non Profit is a Croatian organization?” asked Marr, in an email to Vlatka Ljubenko, a Canadian diplomat in Croatia. “And you have connected them with Ms. James who has a ‘green conscience’ and whose work sharply criticizes the men and women working in forestry and oilsands in our great country?”

Marr’s email had a subject line that said: “Franke James is your fault?”

James alleged that the government was engaging in a form of censorship, highlighting previous comments from Nektarina. The Croatian-based group said in 2011 that the Canadian government was interfering with its efforts to exhibit artwork about climate change to the point where it felt “patronized and even intimidated” by a powerful state.

“What’s creepy is that I was just going blissfully along my way, thinking that I’d have an art show in Europe,” said James. “I had no idea that Canadian government bureaucrats were going to warn the (environmental group) not to show my art.”

Toronto artist Franke James says she wasn’t expecting Canadian diplomats would try to stop her art show. Photo courtesy of Billiam James

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade dismissed allegations of inappropriate monitoring and censorship on Friday.

“To say we have ‘gathered’ information on Ms. James is patently false,” said Caitlin Workman, a spokeswoman for the department, which monitors the media and the public environment for relevant news in keeping with the government’s communications policy.

James suggested Marr had not done adequate research, explaining that her work on the forestry industry was about the merits of an environmental certification program. She also said that she criticized oilsands companies, not the workers, over evidence of the industry’s environmental footprint.

The newly-released records also showed that several senior government officials were monitoring the situation and requested to be informed about emerging details disclosed through access to information legislation.

The office of International Trade Minister Ed Fast said Friday that government guidelines allow the offices of ministers to get advance notice of the release of records for information purposes.

The government confirmed that officials tracking this information included Mike Mueller, at the time the director of parliamentary affairs for Fast, and Tatiana Pospeco, a bureaucratic liaison in the minister’s office, as well as Meghan Lau, who would later move on to a position as a counter-terrorism policy adviser at Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

The office of information commissioner Suzanne Legault has agreed to investigate the government’s decision to withhold numerous passages of the records requested by James in its access to information releases.